Cycle to Work Scheme: Wiggle.co.uk Online Bike Shop Review

If you participate in the excellent Cycle to Work Scheme you will need to buy a bike and accessories. We review Wiggle online bike shop in this article.

The Cycle to Work scheme is proving hugely successful and is definitely stimulating interest in cycling. You soon realise that you will need not only a bike, of course, but quite a few accessories and specialist clothes to go with it.

Online bike shops are benefiting from the boost in cycling business, but which is the best one to buy all that cycling gear that you need? We review Wiggle, one of the biggest cycle retailers in this article.

About Wiggle

Wiggle.co.uk is an Internet only cycle retailer and claim to have over ten years experience in selling bikes and accessories online. The company originates from “Butlers Cycles” which was founded in 1920 and so has a very long history in bike retailing.

Wiggle claim to be the UK’s number one bike and cycle shop and the UK’s 5th most popular online sports shop.

They deliver to more than 70 countries worldwide, supplying more than 250,000 items from their 45,000 sq foot warehouse.

Not only do they sell a very wide range of bikes, accessories and cycle clothing, they also supply gear for swimming, running and triathlon events. Given the surge in interest in triathlons, which involve all three activities, this seems like a very sensible move.

Using the Wiggle web site

As soon as you visit Wiggle.co.uk you come across a home page filled with special offers. There are weekly special offers and seasonal promotions covering items from complete bikes to the smallest accessories.

For example there is currently an October promotion running as well as a “Halloween Special”, in addition to the weekly special deals section.

This sets the tone and expectation that there are good deals to be had and that all prices on the site will be competitive.

Given the problems with the postal strikes at the moment, Wiggle is prominently displaying that it is using couriers for deliveries.

User reviews

There is a huge choice of items available with multiple product choices for every product type. For example, we counted that Wiggle are selling 90 windproof cycling jackets.

So choosing an item to buy can be a bit bewildering, however Wiggle have the answer with their reviews section. Most items have been reviewed by customers and/or reviews from cycling magazines or web sites.

Although customer reviews generally can be very polarised – people tend to only write when they are very pleased or very displeased with a product or service, the reviews on Wiggle seem to be well balanced.

Some products, particularly those priced at high value price points, have received more than 50 customer reviews.

This gives you a good indication of how the product is performing in the real world and is a major advantage in buying from Wiggle as opposed to other online cycle retailers.

The DHB brand

You will notice that many clothing categories include a brand called DHB.

This is Wiggles own brand and they often can be found at high value price points. Not only are these items well priced, they are often of high quality too and therefore represent excellent value.

Browsing through Wiggle.co.uk you will see that DHB items get many user reviews, most complimentary. DHB products often score well in comparative reviews published in cycling magazines.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is a lot to write about when reviewing Wiggle.co.uk.

This article has covered some of the more general aspects of their service. In our next article we will review their order, delivery and returns processes.

All in all, though, Wiggle run a very impressive service that offers great value and scores highly on usability.